"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

My daddy was a sweet, gentle, and wildly imperfect man. But one thing that we all knew, without question, was how much he loved our mama. And lest we forget, periodically, he would sit down and write a letter to each of us kids, telling us how much, and all the reasons why. We all lived in the same town, for so many years, but these letters would arrive unexpectedly in the mail, missives of fierce and eternal Love.

Clare L. Martinis a graduate of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and lifelong Louisiana resident. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies both online and in print, including Avatar Review, Blue Fifth Review, Literary Mama, Louisiana Literature, and Poets and Artists, among others. Her poems have been included in the anthologies The Red Room: Writings from Press 1, Best of Farmhouse Magazine Vol. 1, and Beyond Katrina. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2012), Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web (2011), Best New Poets (2009), and Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net (2008 and 2011).

Seek the Holy Dark available for pre-order. Trade paperback, 66 pages, only $10. Pre-orders will ship in early February.

Praise for Eating the Heart First

“Clare L. Martin pulls off an impressive balancing act in her debut book of poems Eating the Heart First. In this collection, divided into three sections, she manages trust of her intuitive powers while she tats her findings onto poems built with technical expertise. She is a believer of dreams, and the whole of the work can be read as an oneiric treatise guided by the powers she believes in: the power of memory, the power of water, the power of moons, the powers of longing, and the power of love. In one of the late poems a crow in a dream asks, ‘Let me be a whorl of darkness— / Let me be a fist in the sun.’ All of the poems in this collection have the impact of that crow’s call and of the trope it creates. Gradually the poems reveal richly textured revelations of a heart tied to human experience in that ‘dream we cannot know completely.’ And, while we may not ever know the dream completely, Ms. Martin hands us a guidebook to dreams and to the art that uses dream and dreaming as the scaffolding from which to make something beautiful, and useful, and mysterious all at the same time.”

— Darrell Bourque, former Poet Laureate of Louisiana and author of In Ordinary Light, New and Selected Poems

“Clare L. Martin is a fine young poet whose work is dark and lovely and full of a deep organic pulse. Like the landscape of her beloved Louisiana, her work is alive with mystery. You could swim in this hot water, but there are things down inside its darkness that might pull you away forever. It is an exquisite drowning.” — Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Queen of America

Praise for Seek the Holy Dark

From the holy dark of horror storms and freedom in the hand, to starving wolves and old women who live in woods, Clare Martin’s poetic imagery seeks in myth to locate depth of soul. She incants salvation “bone by bone” up from the shadows. Her writing has a beautiful fury, a hard questing and secret exultation that keep the reader poised and intoxicated. “Do you seek the heart too” the opening poem asks, and of course, we answer Yes and read breathlessly on. These poems “drop through this world/into dark awakening.” The strong-hearted will understand.

~Rachel Dacus, author of Gods of Water and Air

Seek the Holy Dark is a book of revelations in poems. Clare L. Martin sees the richness and the poverty that are bedmates, proffers them as gifts, lays them at our feet. Her poems suggest we join in the quest to be both humbled and exalted. Martin, who never looks away, fully understands the duality of nature, its light and darkness, exploring both in this lush and lyrical new collection.

“A 6,200-year-old indigo-blue fabric from Huaca, Peru has been found by a researcher, making it one of the oldest-known cotton textiles in the world and the oldest known textile decorated with indigo blue.”